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Upgrade advise from AMD FX 8120

kronos13

kronos13

kronos13

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Joined
7 Mar 2013
Posts
126
I'm looking to upgrade from my current AMD FX 8120 as I believe this is holding back my MSI 290 Gaming, I have experienced this in BF4. I only currently game at 1920x1080 but this might go up if I upgrade going forward.

So here is what I'm currently considering:
Option 1:
Upgrading to an AMD FX 8320.
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-337-AM&groupid=701&catid=1967&subcat=1825

Option 2:
Upgrading do an Intel CPU platform.
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-471-IN

and new motherboard as well

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-234-MS

or this one

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-570-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=2574

Will I be able to use all my current memory in the Intel motherboard, they are "G.Skill 16GBXL Main Memory DDR3 8 GB PC1600 CL9 Ram Kit 4 x 4 GB"

Is the Intel option advisable with the new Intel CPU's that will be released later this year, I have read that there will not be such a big difference in performance. Also is the i7-4770 the best Intel option?

Any thoughts on what would be the best option price vs performance going forward?
 
Price/performance, the 8320 is the king - especially since you already have the platform.

For BF4, and especially with Mantle, it should perform close enough to the 4770k to make the extra outlay on the Intel (almost £300 extra!) seem ridiculous. An overclock will be necessary to get the most out of it.

Which motherboard do you have? If its a budget one, that might change the picture.
 
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There's only a few games that the FX8320 will fully elevate a single R9 290 though, but for price/performance, there's absolutely no contest.

If you're looking at getting a higher resolution monitor,then I'd probably just get the FX8320.

If you weren't getting the monitor quite so soon, I'd probably get an i5 4670K set up.

EDIT : Although as Cheesy says, your current motherboard changes things, although I'm not sure where he got almost 300 pound extra from lol, to get an i7 4770K set up over buying an FX8320, it's about 220 more, or 150 more for a 4670K. If you have a naff board now, then you'd need a new board, and that then turns the 4770K, into around 120-140 more, and the 4670K about 70 quid-90 quid more.
 
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What motherboard and PSU do you have??

Sweclockers tested 64 player Conquest maps with an FX8350(with 50+ players on each map), with an R9 290X(without Mantle) and the FX8350 was only slightly behind a Core i5 4670K.

Have you tried the Mantle drivers with your current setup??
 
Martini1991 said:
EDIT : Although as Cheesy says, your current motherboard changes things, although I'm not sure where he got almost 300 pound extra from lol, to get an i7 4770K set up over buying an FX8320, it's about 220 more, or 150 more for a 4670K. If you have a naff board now, then you'd need a new board, and that then turns the 4770K, into around 120-140 more, and the 4670K about 70 quid-90 quid more.
Click to expand...

£240 for the i7
£140 for OP's selected mobo
Less £110 for the 8320

= £270, so almost £300
 
This is the graph from Sweclockers:

http://i.imgur.com/b7YdSmM.png

That is without Mantle.

DICE uses the FX8350 in their BF4 demo rigs,so I would suspect that with Mantle you should be OK with an FX8120,especially if you overclock it a bit.


Edit!!

emilakered said:
I am one of the main contributors to the SweClockers article (I hate Siege of Shanghai now..), and without trying to hijack the thread I just want to clarify some things. There is always a lot of information lost in translation, especially as Google Translate is less than stellar sometimes..


* All our tests took place on the 64p version of "Siege of Shanghai" during real multiplayer on real servers. I can't swear we had 60+ players all the time, but I can almost guarantee we played on servers with 50+ almost every benchmark run.

* We outline our benchmark methodology and our settings as detailed as we can (with screenshots!). Of course we couldn't do identical multiplayer playthroughs, but we tried to compensate by collecting data during pretty long timeframes (at least 3x 180 sec). If our three runs didn't give a plausible value, we did a few more until satisfied.


* If you read the comments below the graphs (I know, translations..), we actually doesn't call "a winner" when the FPS difference is to narrow. The nature of multiplayer is to random, so a few FPS must be considered within margin of error. We also try to point out the CPU and GPU bottlenecks in the different scenarios.

Again, I am sorry for "hijacking" the thread a bit, I just wanted to clear some things up. Happy hunting in BF4!
Click to expand...
 
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Hi,
I currently have the below motherboard and PSU.

Asus M5A99X EVO Motherboard

Be Quiet 730W

I have tried Mantle with BF4 and also Starswarm but with both the driver crashes, so I have not been able to test it. I have done various drivers, uninstalls and driver sweeps and just cannot get it to run. The only thing I currently have left to do is to do a clean OS install which I've not got around to.

My current 8120 is clocked at 4Ghz.
 
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I've personally found Mantle with an R9 290 to be fine, but I've also seen it with other cards pretty much fail with Mantle.

Are you on the very latest Mantle driver? It's 14.4 I think.
 
Martini1991 said:
I've personally found Mantle with an R9 290 to be fine, but I've also seen it with other cards pretty much fail with Mantle.

Are you on the very latest Mantle driver? It's 14.4 I think.
Click to expand...

Currently I have 14.3 loaded, will 14.4 another try, but not holding up much hope because none of the previous have worked..
 
The m5a99x evo has a 6 phase DIGI VRM, which is excellent at clocking 83xx CPUs. 4.8GHz wouldn't be out of reach provided your cooler is decent.
 
JonSmith said:
The m5a99x evo has a 6 phase DIGI VRM, which is excellent at clocking 83xx CPUs. 4.8GHz wouldn't be out of reach provided your cooler is decent.
Click to expand...

Thanks Jon, I have the "Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO (120mm)" cooler and that seems to be keeping the 8120 under control at the moment. Although I have felt the system running hotter after I put the MSI 290 gaming in, coming from a Gigabyte 7950 that shouldn't really be a surprise though should it.
 
I would say that by shopping around you can find amazing deals on the 4770k. I managed to get a 4770K, an msi z87 g45 and an evga ACX cooler second hand (like new, used for less than a week) for £280.
coming from an amd fx8350, it makes a big difference.
 
If you think that your current CPU is not enough, a 8320/50 wont change things. I currently own a PD, two BDs and a 4770k and can tell you there is very little difference between the BD and PD in benchmarks and outside of benchmarks I cant tellt eh difference.

I suggest you go to a 4670k or 4770k if you find your current CPU when overclocked is not performing up to your needs. I found my COD ghosts average multiplayer game putting my GPU load average around the mid to low 70s on the fx chips normally, while the 4770k hardly ever drops from 99%.

All depends on whether your looking to upgrade because you have the itch or you want to see some real improvements!

If your looking to upgrade your res to something higher, i suggest going for a 4670k/770k for the sake of being able to push that much more GPU grunt if your single 290 does not cut it at those higher resolutions.
 
Hang on a couple of weeks and get a Z97 motherboard, and use the 4770K in it. With the Z97 you should be set for future 14nm chips as well as the latest feature set.

No point buying into the older chipset when it's so close to a new chipset. Z97 is few weeks away..
 
jimbaw said:
I would say that by shopping around you can find amazing deals on the 4770k. I managed to get a 4770K, an msi z87 g45 and an evga ACX cooler second hand (like new, used for less than a week) for £280.
coming from an amd fx8350, it makes a big difference.
Click to expand...

Thank you, glad to hear you are happy with the move.
 
Avenged7Fold said:
If you think that your current CPU is not enough, a 8320/50 wont change things. I currently own a PD, two BDs and a 4770k and can tell you there is very little difference between the BD and PD in benchmarks and outside of benchmarks I cant tellt eh difference.

I suggest you go to a 4670k or 4770k if you find your current CPU when overclocked is not performing up to your needs. I found my COD ghosts average multiplayer game putting my GPU load average around the mid to low 70s on the fx chips normally, while the 4770k hardly ever drops from 99%.

All depends on whether your looking to upgrade because you have the itch or you want to see some real improvements!

If your looking to upgrade your res to something higher, i suggest going for a 4670k/770k for the sake of being able to push that much more GPU grunt if your single 290 does not cut it at those higher resolutions.
Click to expand...

It's not an upgrade itch, I just want to see some real improvements and also be sure that the 290 is pushed to it's full capabilities. No point it having spent the money on it and now I'm not able to get the best from it.

If I go the Intel route then I'll probably look at selling the 8120 and motherboard on, so might get some money from that then.
 
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